Suggestions for camping problems

[Twicer]

First off I'll list the specific problems that I think are the most common ones with camping. At least these are the problems as perceived by me. I will make suggestions on how to get rid of them later.

Problem 1
Toughness of mobs level 150-250 not worth the reward

Problem 2
Placeholders used as a timesink, many of which has no drop at all

Problem 3
Spawntimes forcing people to log in at specific times

Problem 4
Griefing : Ninjalooting/Training, PvP-conflicts enhancing griefplaying

Problem 5
Location problems : Unable to travel to designated area because of guards/similar dangers

Possible solutions - I'll be happy to discuss these, anything to get thing to work better than what they are now.

Problem 1 - Toughness of mobs level 150-250 not worth the reward
Personally I dont think its so much the toughness of the mobs causing this problem as there
is the lack of possibilities for tactics. Tactics arent just "pulling" in my mind. The difficult part of handling a mob right now is actually the insane nanos they have - take for instance the nanos cast by the mob Notum Soldier, deleteing all buffs taking lower than 40NCU (or so) which makes it incredibly hard to take him down. I think these all should be tweaked more than they are at the moment. Also, the rewards are rather inconsistent on these.. so in short I think that a good idea would be to tweak a lot of these mobs nanos, HP and make them really vulnerable to something. Vulnerable doesnt mean having 6000 AC except radiation where it has 5000. Vulnerable means it would take extra damage by default, for instance having the AC at 1000, or an insanely low nano resist.

Problem 2 - Placeholders used as a timesink, many of which has no drop at all
Placeholder usage for mobs increase not only the stress one has to deal with while trying to obtain something, but in many cases drops nothing, or drops something that is quite insignificant to most. How about introducing items that everyone can use and arent nodrop, for instance generic armbands (wrist items are sadly lacking items-wise) which doesnt have to be very good, but just say, a +3 bonus to various small skills. There could be a whole range of these in there. They would have to be limited, one limit I have to say I do like after thinking about it, would be a level-limit, or possibly the item being level-items. Drop is always QL1, and it will cost you level*100 credits to upgrade it to balance up for it not being rare.

Problem 3 - Spawntimes forcing people to log in at specific times
The biggest problem IMHO - this (please forgive me for using the following sentence) rewards people who have no life outside of AO. Logging in at 4am to have a CHANCE on killing a mob that MIGHT drop an item is really disrupting people. How about this instead :
Every 20 minutes an NPC spawns. This NPC gives out a quest to go "kill bla". A quest-timer is put on the character (or characters if in a team. character will not be able to complete the quest if he joins a team during this time if he took the quest while solo) which lasts for 96 hours to 4 weeks during which time he and his team cannot do this quest again. That would mean you would have to get a team together (and only one team) to guarantee you at least a SHOT at the mob, however not guaranteeing the loot. Perfect examples for this quest would be Nuggets. Same with Professor Jones and if tweaked up a bit, Zuwadza as well. The timesink is still enough to prohibit any massive farming of items. If you want to prohibit it even more, make the items unique. At least this way you wont have to complete en masse in order to get the item.

Problem 4 - Ninjalooting/Training, PvP-conflicts enhancing griefplaying
There are a number of ways you can do this - you can crowdcontrol areas (however not the way you have done it in NW - the CC would have to work 50% clan 50% omni). Thats one way of doing it. Its a very bad way to solve it however. There are other ways of handling it - no way will be easy on the programmers.
Level-requirement to loot would cut some of this down. Training will still be there of course, noone can do anything about this I believe, short of not having any mobs anywhere near populated areas/spawns. Unless the programmers are willing to program "impassable mob-barriers" which would be another option, but that would be exploitable in other ways as well. If someone is not in a team, its also possible to loot without anyone knowing anything about it. If loot-messages could be switched on for single players in these areas that would solve things as well. Again - large undertaking, but its a solution.

Problem 5 - Unable to travel to designated area because of guards/similar dangers
Some of the dungeons and mobs arent available to lower-level players (and in fact as a bi-product of lag while zoning even midrange-high level players) because of guards, or at the very least a longer way around than reasonable. Examples for this is Nelebs dungeon for clans, and Cyborg Barracks for omnis, as well as the upcoming Temple of the Three winds dungeon.

--Open for discussions, not flames.

[Naraya]

If it were up to me to solve the camping problem in the game as-is without scrapping any of these ubermobs, here is what I'd change about them:

1. No ubermob shall EVER spawn in the same playfield in which it was just killed.
2. No ubermob shall EVER wait more than 5 seconds to respawn after death.
3. No ubermob should EVER spawn without causing the gas in the area in which he spawns to drop to 25%. Why? Because if some little ***** wants to come try and ninja loot the ****, I want the chance to kill the *****.
4. No ubermob should EVER be designed with a static list of items to drop upon being killed. Item drops off of ubermobs should be pulled from a pool of items that is huge enough to make the drops totally unpredictable.
5. No ubermob shall EVER have a placeholder.

[Twicer]

There are things about your suggestions that I like and some things that I dont =) I'll expand...

1. No ubermob shall EVER spawn in the same playfield in which it was just killed.

Having to hunt down the ubermob would really cause a lot of grief.. having them in static places is really something that I would say is a good call by FC instead of having them roaming around. It would be different if there were LOTS of ubermobs around however, then this would be a plausible solution I think.

2. No ubermob shall EVER wait more than 5 seconds to respawn after death.

20 Minutes for the 200+ mobs isnt too long of a wait to be frank, I think a 5 second respawn would prevent in-between buffing and also it would enhance farming. the 18 hour waiting period on the mobs like Nuggets and so on however needs to be solved in another way I think - I suggested they could be quest-targets, and I still think that way if you need an item, you will have one shot at it every say 2 weeks and if you dont get the item.. well.. its enough of a timesink to keep FC happy. I'm against any farming of items really - and also you need to understand that FC wont give us "something for nothing".. There always needs to be a balance (I'm not saying there is, heh.. thats why it needs to be changed).

3. No ubermob should EVER spawn without causing the gas in the area in which he spawns to drop to 25%.

This would completely annihilate any chance for any "regular" team to get an item - it would also enhance a lot of griefing I believe. Also - having to PvP at the same time as you are killing a mob isnt something you would really want to do, and take for instance the raids on Acecamp - there are clans/neutrals/omni there not competing but helping out everyone.

4. No ubermob should EVER be designed with a static list of items to drop upon being killed. Item drops off of ubermobs should be pulled from a pool of items that is huge enough to make the drops totally unpredictable.

That is an interesting point however. That would really make things a lot more fun - the loot pool would have to be level-dependant (IE - if the mobs is level 250 it would draw loot from a 200-250 loot pool). For some mobs it wouldnt work of course, like the Zuwadza blackshirt and so on, but I can definately see this happening for the soldiers/trainees for instance.

5. No ubermob shall EVER have a placeholder.

Placeholders are irritating, but I think they are mostly irritating since many are set to not drop anything of real value. Also, the trouble is that having a placeholder spawn 8 times in a row is really demoralizing. If there were a set number of times you have to kill it, it would be better - having to kill the Obediency Inspector at most 3 times before the Enforcer spawns for instance, or even a SET number of times you have to kill him (which would be reset after 24 hours) would be better. That way you would know approximately how long time you would have to spend on these timesinks. I agree though, I personally dont like timesinks like placeholders at all

Edited for bad english